A Great War Journey with Paul Reed

Above The Battlefield: New Munich Trench Cemetery

The Above The Battlefield project was back on the Somme over Easter photographing and filming various locations including some of the smaller battlefield cemeteries around Beaumont-Hamel.

New Munich Trench was a position prepared by British troops at the end of the Battle of the Somme: on 15th November 1916 units of the 51st (Highland) Division captured Munich Trench and 2/2nd Highland Field Company Royal Engineers and 1/8th Royal Scots dug New Munich Trench. The area remained in the forward zone of the battlefield during the very cold winter of 1916/17 and when the Germans retreated from the Somme in the Spring, the area was cleared and many of these cemeteries were made by clearance parties.

New Munich Trench cemetery has nearly 150 burials, with twenty unknowns and the majority are men from battalions of the Highland Light Infantry who fell in November 1916.